Clinical characteristics, systemic complications, and in-hospital outcomes for patients with COVID-19 in Latin America. LIVEN-Covid-19 study : a prospective, multicenter, multinational, cohort study

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has spread worldwide, and almost 396 million people have been infected around the globe. Latin American countries have been deeply affected, and there is a lack of data in this regard. This study aims to identify the clinical characteristics, in-hospital outcomes, and factors associated with ICU admission due to COVID-19. Furthermore, to describe the functional status of patients at hospital discharge after the acute episode of COVID-19. Material and methods: This was a prospective, multicenter, multinational observational cohort study of subjects admitted to 22 hospitals within Latin America. Data were collected prospectively. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize patients, and multivariate regression was carried out to identify factors associated with severe COVID-19. Results: A total of 3008 patients were included in the study. A total of 64.3% of patients had severe COVID-19 and were admitted to the ICU. Patients admitted to the ICU had a higher mean (SD) 4C score (10 [3] vs. 7 [3)], p<0.001). The risk factors independently associated with progression to ICU admission were age, shortness of breath, and obesity. In-hospital mortality was 24.1%, whereas the ICU mortality rate was 35.1%. Most patients had equal self-care ability at discharge 43.8%; however, ICU patients had worse self-care ability at hospital discharge (25.7% [497/1934] vs. 3.7% [40/1074], p<0.001). Conclusions: This study confirms that patients with SARS CoV-2 in the Latin American population had a lower mortality rate than previously reported. Systemic complications are frequent in patients admitted to the ICU due to COVID-19, as previously described in high-income countries

Un preámbulo al fenómeno de la institución

Hoy día las alusiones a la institución en los estudios sociales son algo común y generalizado, por ejemplo, cuando se tematiza sobre la “crisis de las instituciones” o de la necesaria “transformación institucional”; sin embargo, muchas veces se obvia esa realidad a la que se apunta cuando se habla de la “institución”. El presente trabajo es un acercamiento al fenómeno de la “institución”, especialmente a través de un ejercicio interdisciplinar, que busca explorar y sacar el mejor provecho de la indagación del cientista social y del filósofo al respecto, realizando constantemente un balance crítico de sus hallazgos y consideraciones. En esta investigación, y del lado de las Ciencias Sociales, destaca la revisión de la “Teoría de la Institucionalización” de Peter Berger y Thomas Luckmann, desarrollada en su obra magistral “La Construcción Social de la Realidad” (1968); de lado de la filosofía se revisan los apuntes sobre la institución realizados por Xavier Zubiri en su análisis de la sociedad, particularmente a través de dos obras, “Sobre el Hombre” (1986) y “Tres Dimensiones del Ser Humano: individual, social, histórica” (2006); así como la reflexión sobre la institución que realiza Antonio González en su “Introducción a la Filosofía” (1987) y las implicaciones que en “Estructuras de la Praxis” (1997) se sigue de ello. Fruto de este acercamiento, se identifican algunas notas fundamentales del fenómeno institucional, y finalmente se plantea una caracterización del fenómeno institucional que, como preámbulo, pretende sumar al análisis de esta realidad llamada “institución”.ITESO, A. C

Bio-Inspired Hybrid Algorithm for Web Services Clustering

Web services clustering is the task of extracting and selecting the features from a collection of Web services and forming groups of closely related services. The implementation of novel and efficient algorithms for Web services clustering is relevant for the organization of service repositories on the Web. Counting with well-organized collections of Web services promotes the efficiency of Web service discovery, search, selection, substitution, and invocation. In recent years, methods inspired by nature using biological analogies have been adapted for clustering problems, among which genetic algorithms, evolutionary strategies, and algorithms that imitate the behavior of some animal species have been implemented. Computation inspired by nature aims at imitating the steps that nature has developed and adapting them to find a solution of a given problem. In this chapter, we investigate how biologically inspired clustering methods can be applied to clustering Web services and present a hybrid approach for Web services clustering using the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm, K-means, and Consensus. This hybrid algorithm was implemented, and a series of experiments were conducted using three collections of Web services. Results of the experiments show that the solution approach is adequate and efficient to carry out the clustering of very large collections of Web services

Combustion of avocado crop residues: effect of crop variety and nature of nutrients

The thermal behaviour of avocado crop residues was studied. The seeds and the pruning remains from Hass and Bacon varieties were analysed to know their fuel properties. The influence of the fertiliser nature was also studied thorough the application of cow manure and inorganic products. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was carried out under 10, 20 and 40 °C/min heating rates. Kinetics was also estimated according to the Friedman, Flynn-Wall-Ozawa (FWO) and Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS) methods. Results indicated the good fuel performance of the samples. Higher heating values (HHV) were higher for pruning remains (19.43 MJ/kg) when compared to seeds (18.74 MJ/kg). Cow manure improved the behaviour of all avocado samples regardless of the varieties. Average action energy was lower for wood (143.89–211.04 kJ/mol) than seeds (174.05–279.99 kJ/mol). Regarding TGA, this analysis showed three different mass loss associated to hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin release. TGA profiles were so different for the analysed biomass sources according to the fertiliser employed. Hence, the heating rate influenced the thermal behaviour of the samples, highlighting the fast release of the SBC and WHM for the 10 and 20 °C/min ramps respectively

Discharge destination from an acute care for the elderly (ACE) unit

Older adults age 65 and over account for a disproportional number of hospital stays and discharges compared to other age groups. The objective of this paper is to describe placement and characteristics of older patients discharged from an acute care for the elderly (ACE) unit. The study sample consists of 1,351 men and women aged 65 years or older that were discharged from the ACE Unit during a 12-month period. The mean number of discharges per month was 109.2 ± 28.4. Most of the subjects were discharged home or home with home health 841, 62.3%. The oldest elderly and patients who had been admitted from long term care institutions or from skilled nursing facilities to the ACE unit were less likely to return to home

Fernando de Buen. Ictiólogo Iberoamericano.

Este documento está dedicado al recuerdo de Fernando de Buen, a quién podríamos considerar como uno de los primeros “ictiólogos iberoamericanos”. En este caso nos encontramos con un profesional que, por la locura de una guerra fratricida, tuvo que dejar su patria y trasladarse al continente americano, residiendo inicialmente en México dónde adopta su ciudadanía. Posteriormente viaja a Sudamérica para trabajar en Uruguay y luego en Chile. En esa extensa travesía generó parte de su legado, dejando aportes substanciales para el crecimiento y consolidación de la ictiología neotropical. Por ello, a más de cincuenta años de su desaparición, junto a la invalorable colaboración de los colegas de Chile, España, México y Uruguay, concretamos este modesto archivo con la idea de que su figura y su obra no se pierdan en la “bruma de los tiempos” y que las jóvenes generaciones conozcan a quiénes abrieron los surcos de nuestra disciplina aún, como en este caso, llevando consigo el dolor y la angustia del destierro

Automated ontology population and enrichment of scientific publications

Scientific publications are the most important resources available to the research communities. Researchers want their work to be widely recognized and available and also need powerful search engines to identify other publications and researchers working in the same area. Therefore, a good representation and organization of scientific products is crucial for an accurate retrieval of information. This paper describes an approach for automated population and semantic enrichment of an ontology model that represents scientific publications. Specifically, the type of enrichment used in this approach consists of implementing semantic similarity measurements between publications. Several experiments were performed to identify the best similarity measurement, using a statistical approach and the precision of the measurements

Modeling and Simulation as Boundary Objects to Facilitate Interdisciplinary Research

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150614/1/sres2564.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150614/2/sres2564_am.pd

Surface Screening in the Casimir Force

We calculate the corrections to the Casimir force between two metals due to the spatial dispersion of their response functions. We employ model-independent expressions for the force in terms of the optical coefficients. We express the non-local corrections to the Fresnel coefficients employing the surface $d_\perp$ parameter, which accounts for the distribution of the surface screening charge. Within a self-consistent jellium calculation, spatial dispersion increases the Casimir force significatively for small separations. The nonlocal correction has the opposite sign than previously predicted employing hydrodynamic models and assuming abruptly terminated surfaces.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure